If you’re a man in a Martin Scorsese movie, you’re probably going to strike a very familiar pose, with your arms stretching out perpendicular to your torso. In other words, a position very similar to Jesus on the cross.

Scorsese uses these cruciform poses for characters like Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street as they puff themselves up with Messianic fervor, and for a number of victims of violence—even bums and mobsters—sprawled out on the ground. Some...